FREDDY WEST TJAKAMARRA

Painted in 1972, consignment 14 to the Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs
Private collection, New South Wales
Sotheby's, Fine Australian, Aboriginal and International Paintings, Melbourne, 22-23 November, 1999, lot 368
Private collection, Sydney

Bardon, G., and J. Bardon, Papunya, A Place Made After the Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p.262 for a reproduction of Bardon's original diagramatic drawing, for this painting.

The work is housed in a wooden frame behind glass and is in very good condition.
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According to Bardon's annotated diagram the painting depicts two ritual men in a ceremonial setting; the upper U-shape represents a Tjapaltjarri man, the lower by  Tjampitjinpa man.  Both are decorated in their painted body designs and surrounded by ritual objects.

Th representation of the two men either side of the ceremonial ground (the roundel) may reflect the fact that the men belong to different moieties and therfore have complementary rights and responsibilities in ceremony, in ancestral ownership of land, and of painted designs.